Posts under ‘lecture’

For years I attended toxic meetings where one guy yammered on and one  fellow worker turned off his hearing aids. It’s the only time I can remember wishing for Gordon’s hearing disability.
That’s how bad these meetings were. People moved back and forth  from bored to bitching, while Gordon slept with his eyes open and [...]

Government Funds Promote Failing Secondary Schools
People say stimulus money simply creates new layers of bureaucracy that prolong broken secondary school programs. My question is: How will the White House Campaign to Promote Science and Math Education support teens to climb new mental  peaks?  Will successful schools proliferate through fast growing charters?
President [...]

Written By Ellen Weber, PhD and Robyn McMaster, PhD
Higher Education and Brain Based Benefits

Challenges of Change
Renewal is to the university community today what Renaissance was to the Middle Ages. Both encompass a resurgence of learning. Both tap into more potential from the human brain. To reconfigure university teaching for a rebirth [...]

Facilitators with brains in mind, blast open 10 entry points that inspire innovation:

At meetings – facilitators add zip to roundtables because people speak and feel heard.
Across professions – facilitators inspire shared language that leaves behind jargon to favor communication.
In learning circles facilitators draw on multiple literacies to engage voices on the other side and [...]

To renew with the brain in mind is to approach teens and teaching with new vision, diverse tools, and higher expectations for all:

Teens bring unique knowledge to technology and renewal both recognizes and uses their technical skills. (Braden Husdal in Teaching starts from Brain Down)
Repetition is less effective for teens than teaching math [...]

Imagine reinvigorated secondary schools or universities, designed with each learner’s brain in mind. It’s time for the death of education to become the dawn of learning. Time for learning renewal to reinvent your entire community! If you see past broken systems, or catch a glimpse of talented people ahead, you’ve already spotted the brain’s plasticity [...]

Have you experienced mental power that bubbles over in circles where no brain is left behind? Interactive sessions where creativity trumps criticism, and diversity’s the handmaiden of dignity and innovative virtue?
If so, would you agree that brilliant solutions tend to flow from pools just outside of the prevailing thought – where:

1. No Brain Left [...]

Read vision statements  that affirm  secondary and university renewal, and you’ll spot innovative learning opportunities for all. Observe classes in these same schools, though, and practical results appear far less impressive. Have you noticed that a school’s intent, and its classroom practices too often differ when it comes to renewed learning and assessment opportunities for [...]

Spot any gap where you live or work, regardless of how small, and you may well be staring into the eyeballs of your own destiny.  How so?
Even though I taught university classes and facilitated top leaders around the world for many years, it still surprises me how few people ever discuss the proven wonder of [...]

Sat through meetings lately where one person only talks? If so, you’ll be interested to know why your brain bristles, spits and stalls.
While many still lecture and demand rote responses in paper-pencil-tests, faculty who know research on retention, tend to facilitate brainpower from wider circles for broader solutions. Have you seen it?
Brain based chats are [...]

Some  university faculty add value to the learning process. Others clearly do not. That’s not new. But what separates good faculty from those who fail the learning process?
New neuro-discoveries changed playing fields yet some faculty cling to sage-on-the-stage mentality. Poor faculty see their role to lecture and test for facts that stick through rote. [...]

Ever wonder why boredom strikes when people talk at you?  Wasting time at meetings or lectures? You’ll be interested in research from the National Training Laboratories in Bethel, Maine – and quoted in Geoff Petty’s Teaching Today shows that people retain far more when they when actively involved.
Lectures are the best way to get information [...]

Tom Hansen said it best in his cartoon video Why Meetings Suck! Check out this hilarious video and when you stop laughing you’ll likely see yourself also trapped in the meeting Hansen dramatizes. Hopefully you’re not the bloke who leads such gatherings. In either case,  brain based approaches offer results that transform meetings into vibrant [...]

It’s no secret that secondary schools stunt teens’ talent, yet where is the stir for strategies to boost brainpower they bring to class daily? Sit through a university lecture, and you’ll agree that brainpower remains untapped, even for faculty. Learners hold amazing segues into mental reserves, yet educational organizations look the other way, dump good [...]

Did you know that your brain’s equipped to change rapidly and to biologically reshape itself through chemical and electrical activity? This brain fact can speed up or slow down the ethical changes people crave, and too often fail to achieve at work. How so? Changes and growth are based more on doing acts though, than [...]

Take your brain back to the last lecture or meeting you endured, and you’ll likely agree with research that shows how lectures work against human brains.  It’s the same for meetings where few people talk for the most part. You retain less than 5% heard in lectures, while you retain more than 90% of what [...]